No substitute for school

Tiffany Jenkins believes that the education department should be kept away from museums

much of the core work that museums do is being orientated around education. Many professionals think that, if they press the learning buttons, money will be dished out by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), as well as by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). And they are right: there is funding for museums that is explicitly linked to educational purposes.

The most recent initiative is the Museum, Libraries and Archive Council's programme 'Inspiring Learning for All: a new framework for museums, libraries and archives'. It derives from the 'Renaissance in the Regions' scheme, which allocates £12.2 million to the delivery of education programmes to school-aged children, and aims to put learning at the centre of the institution.

To all those of us who value museums and education this may seem like a good thing. But on closer examination there is cause for concern. There are problems with spelling out and dictating a relationship between museums and education. There should be no school ties. Inviting another government department (the DfES) to direct and assess the role of museums is a bad idea, especially when its remit is formal education and not culture. The new order will put museums under the control of officials and an additional agenda that will continue to compromise the already shaky autonomy of the sector_ There is a risk that more control from Whitehall will turn museums into outposts of the classroom. Museums can be educational but they are not for education. These institutions complement the classroom but cannot act as a substitute for it, And museums should not be held to account for curriculum standards — a burden they would struggle under. Museums are not a replacement for the school but are a higher form of scholastic institution in their own right.

Museums are already used well. Teachers take children to see the carved hieroglyphs and mummies when studying the Egyptians, artefacts and parchments when studying historical method. Kids are sent running across the moors and into the BronW Parsonage Museum, while reading Wuthering Heights. And they are taken on school trips to the local museum to see what they find interesting. Places like these do bring the past and the arts to life.

While more students could visit museums, what they can offer children shouldn't be measured in the narrow terms of Key Stages, exams and A-level results. We will miss out on what museums can teach children if we link them to the educational curriculum with prescribed outcomes. It's far better for teacher and student to get out of the classroom and away from targets and boxes to tick, and for them to explore freely other worlds. Museums can give children a window on to places beyond the classroom, a history of civilisations and adult knowledge.

Curiously, many of the education schemes are not about what is in the museum anyway. There is a drive to get the students in but a gap in the understanding of what the institution could offer. 'Museum Fever!', a Campaign for Learning through Museums and Galleries (clmg)-co-ordinated project made possible by more funding from the DfES, is an example of one of these empty but deemed-successful projects. The scheme takes young residents from the Salford Foyer (part of a national network providing accommodation and support for disadvantaged young people) apparently to re-engage with learning through work with Salford Museum and Art Gallery.

Champions of 'Museum Fever!' explain that participants developed new skills, such as web design, IT and communication skills. Great for those involved, but was there anything unique to this gallery that made this happen? Reports of the project do not mention appreciating the Japanese ivory carvings in the collection or understanding the iconography in the Victorian paintings. Couldn't they have improved their ICT skills in a computer lab or local drop-in centre instead?

The report 'What did you learn at the museum today?', issued by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, explains that the value of taking children to a museum is in encouraging positive attitudes towards learning. And again it is unclear what the museum has contributed that a good lesson couldn't.

It is clear throughout the report and examples of 'best practice' — that terrible term for good examples — that 'positive attitudes' is what it's all about. There is something evasive about this refrain. Something that smacks of low expectations of what children can learn in a classroom or, for that matter, in a museum.

Students don't learn about something — a time, people or a place — but they gain a nice attitude. They are examined on the process of learning but not on the content, and as a result they are tested a lot but learn little in a classroom or in a gallery.

Nicola Nuttall, the director of clmg, indicates in her explanation of what learning is that it is a rejection of top-down education. The world has changed: learning doesn't mean education any more. Education meant something that was done to you, by a process that was like a manufacturing industry, churning out educational products — you and me,' she said. Nuttall goes on to explain, 'Learning, by contrast, is something that is done with you, throughout your life, and is everything that education was not.'

With learning do we ever find out what has been learnt, or would that be derided as education, and far too didactic? These schemes sound like a defensive attitude to schooling covered up and branded as 'learning' in a museum.

It is possible that the crisis in education is driving teachers out of the classroom, away from 'education' and into the museums simply because they are not schools. But this is a negative move, as once in the gallery there is the same uncertainty about how to teach, what to teach and why to teach it.

Better results would come with more confidence in knowledge and education. Once assured that children can learn in schools, we can marry that with what they can discover in museums. We can achieve top marks and open minds without marking museums as a substitute for schools.

Tiffany Jenkins is the author of Human Remains: objects to study or ancestors to bury?, published by the Institute of Ideas.